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Return to The Blues Brothers MovieSaid director John Landis, "The Blues Brothers is a true musical comedy. People burst into song and dance just as they do in the original American form invented on Broadway and glorified in Hollywood. But the story, the musical numbers and the comedy all have a very realistic look. The film is designed for music and is very stylized."
Dan Aykroyd, who wrote the original screenplay with Landis, explained, "It's the story of two hoodlums who want to go straight and get redeemed. But they just don't have it together and they keep getting into bigger and bigger trouble."
"Jake and Elwood are on a genuine crusade," said Landis. "It's not the Holy Grail they're after, its 5,000 bucks. But their quest is for equally good reasons. They're good and sympathetic people. To me, that's the strength of the movie. The audience must like the characters."
John Belushi added, "Jake is into music, drinking and sliding through life. His craziness confuses Elwood. Elwood is religious, a bookworm and a motorhead. He takes care of the details, like a road manager. Jake's Lies upset Elwood, and Elwood's driving makes Jake nervous."
Belushi called the film "a tribute to black American music." The score, featuring no original songs, showcases music of decades past and some of its greatest performers. They all play characters who are integral to the story.
The score contains blues, rock and roll, soul and rhythm and blues, as well as some country-western, pop, Latin and classical.
It was just "fooling around, for fun" when best friends Belushi and Aykroyd first created Jake and Elwood. They developed the act for friends, at local clubs, and on cross-country trips. They then performed on a few Saturday Night Live warm-ups and appeared as the Blues Brothers twice on the show itself, in 1977-78.
Said Aykroyd: "John was into rock and roll and heavy metal rock, I was more into blues. We turned each other on to our favorite songs and musicians. Then he assembled the band while I wrote the saga."
The idea for a Blues Brothers movie originated with Aykroyd. In June 1978, the Blues Brothers opened for Steve Martin at the Universal Amphitheater. No one expected the thunderous reception they got during this engagement. An album, recorded during this engagement, was released later that year and started its climb to double Platinum status. It hit number one on the national charts and yielded the hit single "Soul Man." The Blues Brothers started filming in summer of 1979, and in 1980 the album received three Grammy nominations.
To bring The Blues Brothers to the screen, the filmmakers spent three-and-a-half months on location in Chicago, where the story is set. Producer Robert K. Weiss said, "We received unprecedented cooperation from the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and local talent and crews. Rarely have I seen or heard of a city making so many locations available to one film production. As a result, we feel that our movie highlights the rich atmosphere of this unique metropolis better than it has ever been seen on the screen before."
The first day's filming had 76 movie police cars zooming over Chicago's bridges and under the post office building in pursuit of the Blues Brothers. The action scenes were filmed on Sundays and holidays, when the center of the city was nearly vacant. By Monday, all the debris was cleaned away. Other locations included colorful Maxwell Street, still mills, the Cook County Building, interiors and exteriors of Joliet Prison and Daley Plaza.
The attack on Daley Plaza featured dozens of stunt people, six camera crews, 100 crowd extras, 100 extras costumed as police, 100 National Guardsmen costumed as soldiers, a four-man SWAT team rappelling down the Cook County Building, three Sherman M4 tanks, five fire engines and two Bell Jet Ranger Helicopters.
The moviemakers spent three days inside Joliet Prison filming Jake's release. With real prisoners as extras, they worked in a cell block, the yard, the sally-port and the quartermaster's building. To depict Jake's dramatic emergence from the pen, the film unity arranged for the opening of a gate that hadn't been used in decades.
The exteriors of the concert sequence were filmed in Chicago at the restored front facade of the defunct South Shore Country Club. The interiors were done at the Hollywood Palladium.
The interior audience was recruited through a radio announcement. To help the audience cope with the inevitable boredom of four days' filming, Belushi and Aykroyd performed for them off-camera.
The enthusiasm of the crowd did not have to be faked. In addition to seeing the Blues Brothers in person, they got to discover a star from another generation, Cab Calloway. They responded to his "Hi De Ho's" with the same delight as the hepcats used to do and gave Calloway a spontaneous standing ovation.
Pre-recording of the musical numbers was done in Chicago by Belushi, Aykroyd, the band, Calloway, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. The film's choreography blends theatrical Broadway style, traditional Hollywood numbers, totally cinematic constructions and concert staging.
"I didn't want to make rules and have a single dancing style," said Landis. "I wanted to use whatever was right for that part of the film."
The black suits and hats worn by Jake and Elwood were derived from Jazz album covers of the '50s and were originally worn by John Lee Hooker. This get-up was intended to make musicians look like businessmen and thus avoid the attention of the police.
In creating the Blues Brothers, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd added the (Ray Ban) sunglasses and the (Timex) digital watches. Costume designer Deborah Nadoolman made 30 subtly different versions of the hats and mohair suits and five for Cab Calloway, to accomodate the actors' physical and character differences and the demands of the movie, including stunts and musical numbers.
